A cleaner working at my house received a penalty charge notice on Wednesday, as is always the case i handed them enough hours worth of visitor parking permits to cover their stay but i hadn't realised that on the back of the permits it say's "A maximum of two permits can be displayed at any one time but the second permit must be validated with the time the first permit expires." I had inadvertently given my cleaner 3 x 1 hour permits to cover the 3 hour stay with the 3 x permits displayed in the car completed to represent the following times:
Permit 1: 9.05am — 10.05am
Permit 2: 10.05am — 11.05am
Permit 3: 11.05am — 12.05pm
However, the charge was issued at 11.03am so before the (allowable) 2nd permit had even expired. When i queried this with the parking officer he said the penalty charge was simply for displaying 3 x permits (and not based on over staying the expiry of any particular permit).
In theory though we could have suddenly read the rules on the back of the permit at say 11.04am, removed the offending 3rd permit and left the parking space before the 2nd permit expired at 11.05am (they even have a 15 minute grace period). But effectively they're saying simply displaying 3 permits in a window is an offence, which i find ridiculous. Sure if the car was parked without a valid permit but the 2nd permit was still good by the time they issued a ticket.
Do you think there's grounds for appeal here?
In addition, the contravention cited on the ticket is:
'07s Parked with payment made to extend the stay beyond initial time (shared use bay).'
Someone argued that it's not even a shared bay so the wrong contravention code has been used. To clarify it's a parking bay – like all the others on our road – that can be used by either residents who hold a residential parking permit (as is the case with myself) or visitors who display a visitors permit (as was the case with my cleaner).
Again, grounds for appeal?
